Intact but empty forests? Patterns of hunting-induced mammal defaunation in the tropics
Intact but empty forests? Patterns of hunting-induced mammal defaunation in the tropics
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pbio.3000247
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发表时间：
2019-05-01
期刊：
影响因子：
9.8
通讯作者：
Huijbregts, Mark A. J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Benitez-Lopez, Ana;Santini, Luca;Huijbregts, Mark A. J.
由于工业伐木、城市化、农业和基础设施建设，热带森林日益退化，仅有20%的剩余区域被认为完好无损。然而，这一数字不包括其他更隐晦但普遍存在的退化形式，如过度狩猎。在这里，我们利用当地狩猎研究中3281只哺乳动物数量下降的数据库，对热带地区哺乳动物数量减少的空间模式进行了量化和绘制。我们同时解释了种群数量的下降和种群在当地灭绝的可能性，这是与人类进入偏远地区和物种易受狩猎的脆弱性有关的几个预测因素的函数。我们估计，所有热带哺乳动物物种的平均丰度下降了13%，其中中型物种减少了27%，大型哺乳动物减少了40%。据预测，在约50%的泛热带森林面积(1400万公里(2))中，哺乳动物数量将部分减少(即10%-100%)，西非的哺乳动物数量将大幅下降(70%)。根据我们的预测，52%的完整森林和62%的荒野地区部分缺乏大型哺乳动物，狩猎可能会影响热带地区20%的保护区(PA)的哺乳动物种群，特别是在西非、中部非洲和东南亚。过度狩猎对热带哺乳动物种群的普遍影响可能会对生态系统功能和依赖野生肉类的社区的生计产生深远的影响，并强调森林覆盖率本身并不一定表明生态系统的完整性。我们呼吁在(大规模)生物多样性评估中系统地考虑狩猎影响，以便对人类造成的生物多样性损失进行更具代表性的估计。
Tropical forests are increasingly degraded by industrial logging, urbanization, agriculture, and infrastructure, with only 20% of the remaining area considered intact. However, this figure does not include other, more cryptic but pervasive forms of degradation, such as overhunting. Here, we quantified and mapped the spatial patterns of mammal defaunation in the tropics using a database of 3,281 mammal abundance declines from local hunting studies. We simultaneously accounted for population abundance declines and the probability of local extirpation of a population as a function of several predictors related to human accessibility to remote areas and species' vulnerability to hunting. We estimated an average abundance decline of 13% across all tropical mammal species, with medium-sized species being reduced by >27% and large mammals by >40%. Mammal populations are predicted to be partially defaunated (i.e., declines of 10%-100%) in ca. 50% of the pantropical forest area (14 million km(2)), with large declines (>70%) in West Africa. According to our projections, 52% of the intact forests (IFs) and 62% of the wilderness areas (WAs) are partially devoid of large mammals, and hunting may affect mammal populations in 20% of protected areas (PAs) in the tropics, particularly in West and Central Africa and Southeast Asia. The pervasive effects of overhunting on tropical mammal populations may have profound ramifications for ecosystem functioning and the livelihoods of wild-meat-dependent communities, and underscore that forest coverage alone is not necessarily indicative of ecosystem intactness. We call for a systematic consideration of hunting effects in (large-scale) biodiversity assessments for more representative estimates of human-induced biodiversity loss.